Walt Whitman Quarterly Review

Rhode, Robert T.

Contextualizing Whitman's "Live-Oak"

Conrad, Eric

31
NOTES
TwO PrEviOuSly uNdOcumENTEd rEviEwS Of 
Leaves of Grass 
 
1. Leaves of Grass (1856): “Universally admired by men whose authority is 
unquestionable”
Pasted within one of walt whitman’s scrapbooks, now preserved in the charles 
E. feinberg collection at the library of congress, are two 1856 reviews of 
Leaves of Grass published within months of one another in the New York Daily 
News. One of those reviews—a short, but favorable notice of the second edition 
of Leaves of Grass, reprinted below and soon available on the Walt Whitman 
archive—has until now remained undocumented.
in february of 1856 the Daily News dubbed the first edition of Leaves 
of Grass “the strangest, most extraordinary production” ever reviewed in its 
pages. The Daily News repeats this sentiment in the November 28, 1856, article 
transcribed below, characterizing whitman’s work as “universally admired 
by men whose authority is unquestionable.” This lofty appraisal of the second 
edition is no doubt influenced by two distinctive characteristics of the 1856 
Leaves of Grass itself: whitman’s controversial decision to gold stamp ralph 
waldo Emerson’s personal praise of the poet in 1855 (“i greet you at the begin-
ning of a great career”) on the spine of the volume, and the lengthy appendix 
“leaves-droppings,” which reprinted, among other items, Emerson’s letter in 
full along with whitman’s response to his “master.” Though not “universally 
admired,” the design of the 1856 Leaves of Grass suggested that at least one 
man of “unquestionable” authority stood behind whitman’s poetry.
many reviewers of this edition were incensed by whitman’s unauthor-
ized use of Emerson’s endorsement on the cover, but this Daily News review 
is a reminder that some found the material presentation of the 1856 edition 
refreshing, shameless blurb and all. much like the Brooklyn Daily Times, which 
lauded the improved typography of whitman’s second edition, the Daily News 
describes the compact, cramped, yet “neatly printed” pages of the 1856 Leaves 
of Grass as a “decided improvement” on the 1855 edition. 
whitman’s personal copy of the review was clipped out of the newspaper 
mid-quotation; the transcription below reprints, in brackets, the missing pas-
sage as it appears in the 1856 Leaves of Grass. 
32
 Our BOOK TABlE1
leaves of Grass. Brooklyn, New york, 1856. for sale by fowler & wells, No. 
308 Broadway.
 A new edition of walt whitman’s wonderful poems.
 leaves of Grass was first published something more than a year ago. it then 
appeared in a quarto form of 89 pages, and, as we understand, was set up and 
printed by the author himself. The present edition is a decided improvement on 
the first; it contains 384 pages, 18mo., and being neatly printed is much more 
desirable than the quarto.
 we have heretofore reviewed walter whitman’s poems, and spoken of them 
at considerable length, and spoken very highly of them, too. it is, of course, un-
necessary to repeat what we have previously said, or even to enter largely into a 
discussion of the eccentricities of the author, or the peculiarities and the beauties 
of his poems. it will be sufficient to say that they have been almost universally 
admired by men whose authority is unquestionable, and with scarcely an excep-
tion, have been highly praised by the press of both this country and of England.
 Some of these “leaves-droppings” will be found at the end of the book, together 
with the correspondence between ralph waldo Emerson and the author. The 
beautiful testimonial from mr. Emerson has been the means of gaining for walt 
whitman an increased number of admirers. 
 in walt whitman’s letter to mr. Emerson, he writes in precisely the same style 
as he does in his poems. from that letter we take the following extract. it presents 
an idea of his manner of writing, and truthfully describes a class of persons who 
are exactly opposite to walt whitman. Here it is, and with it we close our notice:
up to the present, as helps best, the people, like a lot of large boys, have 
no determined tastes, are quite unaware of the grandeur of themselves, 
and of their destiny, and of their immense strides—accept with vorac-
ity whatever is presented them in novels, histories, newspapers, poems, 
schools, lectures, everything. Pretty soon, through these and other means, 
their development makes the fiber that is capable of itself, and will assume 
determined tastes. The young men will be clear what they want, and will 
have it. They will follow none except him whose spirit leads them in the 
like spirit with themselves. Any such man will be welcome as the flowers of 
may. Others will be put out without ceremony. How much is there anyhow, 
to the young men of these States, in a parcel of helpless dandies, who can 
neither fight, work, shoot, ride, run, command—some of them devout, 
[some quite insane, some castrated—all second-hand, or third, fourth, or 
fifth hand—waited upon by waiters, putting not this land first, but always 
other lands first, talking of art, doing the most ridiculous things for fear of 
being called ridiculous, smirking and skipping along, continually taking 
off their hats—no one behaving, dressing, writing, talking, loving, out of 
any natural and manly tastes of his own, but each one looking cautiously 
to see how the rest behave, dress, write, talk, love—pressing the noses of 
33
dead books upon themselves and upon their country—favoring no poets, 
philosophs, literats here, but dog-like danglers at the heels of the poets, 
philosophs, literats, of enemies’ lands—favoring mental expressions, models 
of gentlemen and ladies, social habitudes in These States, to grow up in 
sneaking defiance of the popular substratums of The States?]
The New York Daily News was an early champion of Leaves of Grass, but, when 
the third edition appeared in 1860, the paper’s proslavery sympathies were out 
of step with Thayer & Eldridge, whitman’s new abolitionist publishers. An 
article on the September 1860 New york Trade Sale of Books demonstrates 
how the radical politics of whitman’s Boston publishers had tainted Leaves 
of Grass for the Daily News. A list of Thayer & Eldridge’s publications—“life 
of the Savior . . . the life of lincoln, capt. John Brown, wm. H. Seward, 
Echoes of Harper’s ferry, Sumner’s Speech”—concludes by mentioning “walt 
whitman’s leaves of Grass, and other Black republican documents.”2 Just 
exactly how Leaves of Grass functioned as a “Black republican” document 
is unclear, but whitman’s association with an active abolitionist publishing 
house was possibly enough incentive for the Daily News to ignore the poet’s 
newest volume except for this brief mention.
2. Leaves of Grass (1860): “Unprecedented insult upon a refined society”
The third edition of Leaves of Grass was similarly ignored in the South. Though 
whitman’s persona was still notorious in that region during 1860, there are 
almost no documented, full-length reviews of the Thayer & Eldridge volume 
published in southern periodicals.3 until now, the only such review was John 
r. Thompson’s anonymous notice in Georgia’s southern field and fireside. 
However, this recently discovered review transcribed below (and soon available 
on the Walt Whitman archive) from Centre College Magazine, a literary monthly 
founded in 1859 and published out of Kentucky by the Presbyterian-affiliated 
centre college, adds to our growing understanding of whitman’s reception 
in the South as the nation approached civil war. 
The magazine’s anonymous reviewer is willing to grant that whitman 
and his poetry are “original” in “form, style and binding, as well as reading 
matter.” Even further, by the periodical’s own definition, Leaves of Grass, a 
“prodigy of oddness and singularity,” evinces whitman’s “genius.” But Cen-
tre College Magazine is far less forgiving when it comes to whitman’s “base 
and abject soul.” like many contemporary reviews, the moralizing tone of 
this piece shies away from reprinting any passages that might fully illustrate 
whitman’s “depravity and grossness.” instead, the review allows only “fair 
examples of all that which is not too gross and obscene” in Leaves of Grass 
“to stain this page.” ironically, the excerpt from the poem “walt whitman” 
that appears below this editorial disclaimer inadvertently heightens the sexual 
innuendo (and staining potential) of whitman’s verse by capitalizing the last 
three words of the line—“Your Lover Comes”—while in Leaves of Grass only 
“Your Lover” is emphasized typographically. Apparently, whitman’s words 
three lines later in the 1860 edition—“Thruster holding me tight, and that 
34
i hold tight! / we hurt each other as the bridegroom and the bride hurt each 
other”—were sufficiently “obscene” to be censored. 
Perhaps the only distinctly southern quality of the Centre College Maga-
zine review is its eager appropriation of a passage from chapter 16 of william 
Gilmore Simms’s novel Beauchampe: or The Kentucky Tragedy: a Tale of Passion 
(1842), a work based on the sensational murder of Solomon P. Sharp by Jere-
boam O. Beauchamp in 1825.  The unattributed lines are taken from a scene 
in the novel describing a rally in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where an “unctu-
ous” politician—who “rains precious drops . . . which might be eloquence, 
if it were not balderdash!”—delivers a theatrical speech to his constituency. 
The protagonist, Beauchampe, eventually sees past the politician’s empty 
rhetoric, but not before initially being misled by the speaker’s veneer of power 
and eloquence: “‘who is this man!’ quoth our young hero, Beauchampe, as he 
listened to the muddy torrent, which, like some turbid river, having overflowed 
its banks, comes down, rending and raging, a thick flood of slime and foam, 
bringing along with it the refuse of nauseous places, and low flats, and swampy 
bottoms, and offal stalls! The youth was bewildered. The eloquent man was 
so sure of his ground and auditors—seemed so confident in his strength—so 
little like a doubting giant—that it was long before Beauchampe could discover 
that he was a mere wind-bag, a bloated vessel of impure air that, becoming 
fixed air through a natural process, at length explodes and breaks forth with 
a violence duly proportioned to its noisomeness.”4 whitman’s poetry, Centre 
College Magazine warns its readers, is equally full of “balderdash” and must 
be approached critically in order to expose whitman for what he is, “a bloated 
vessel of impure air.” The review is transcribed below in full:
Leaves of Grass.5
At length is anxious expectation relieved, and the public curiosity gratified.
 WaLt. Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” has made its appearance, revised and 
enlarged in this—the Third Edition. The very title is the synonym for excentric-
ity [sic]. in form, style and binding, as well as reading matter, it is a prodigy of 
oddness and singularity. 
 Emphatically can the author claim for himself, with all justice, the merit of 
originality. That the production evinces genius, is unquestionable—if you de-
fine genius to be the great ruling faculty, the “Pharos of the mind,” that which 
invents and creates of its own innate power, and clothes its creatures in that 
mystic garb, which only genius can command. in fact, to say that the poem has 
originality, implies the operation of genius. for what can be original that is not 
an offering of genius? This is certainly a merit, and it redeems somewhat the 
character of the book.
 we have read somewhere, a very apt comparison of a “balderdash” politician’s 
speech to “some turbid river, which, having overflowed its banks, comes down, 
rending and raging a thick flood of slime and foam—bringing along with it the 
refuse of nauseous places, and low flats and swampy bottoms.[”] This comparison 
will admirably apply in the present instance.
 WaLt Whitman’s poem is but an agglomeration of rude, barbarous, gro-
35
tesque—thoughts, expressed in quaint, whimsical, abnormal words, often 
breathing sentiments the very lowest—full of the most abandoned depravity. 
His is not a soul
“To gentle harmonies attuned.”6
 He is, as he himself expresses it—“free, fresh, savage,”—“one of the roughs,” 
and as we express it, a stranger to refinement, a slave to the brute passion.
 He seems utterly devoid of all the “nobler emotion.”—love he does not know. 
Beauty in woman he looks upon only as the object of passion.
 His base and abject soul can not properly appreciate the fairest and best of all 
God’s works, whose mission is tenderness and love; the ministers of joy in the 
hour of sorrow; of condolence in the hour of desolation; of peace in trouble, trial 
and affliction. This of itself, should damn him in the public mind, and strike his 
bold, insolent and unblushing head into the dust of public scorn and loathing.
unprecedented insult upon a refined society! He dares raise his repulsive head 
and hurl indignity and affront in the face of an enlightened reading public—the 
coarse, unrefined expression of his own depravity and grossness. 
 reader, examine his volume, and you will ascertain that we do not speak ex-
travagantly. No language is too strong to express his dissoluteness and laxity of 
morals. And yet, WaLt Whitman has some redeeming qualities. we speak now 
of mental attributes, not of moral. we think no one after a perusal of “Leaves 
of Grass,” would dare admit that its author was possessed of moral characteris-
tics.—Surely we will not hazard such a statement. we have said above, that he has 
genius; that this work was a production of genius. This will be readily admitted.
 But surely a wanton, unchaste muse was consulted; and wanton, unchaste 
poetry was produced. yet there are interspersed in the poem, thoughts of wild, 
uncouth beauty, which can not fail to charm the reader—such gems, sparkling in 
the “slime and foam” drifting on this “turbid river’s” bosom. But that the reader 
may be better able to judge of the merits of the book, we quote some lines—fair 
examples of all that which is not too gross and obscene to stain this page.
“Smile, O voluptuous cool-breathed Earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
Earth of departed sunset! Earth of the mountains misty topt!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon, just tinged with blue!
Earth of shine and dark, moulding the tide of the river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds, brighter and clearer for my sake!
far-swooping, elbowed Earth! rich, apple-blossomed Earth!
Smile for Your Lover Comes!”
 To comment is useless. you readily perceive the remarkable oddness, the 
peculiar style, and, we may add, beauty of the lines.
 The ensemble may be easily imagined from the character of this part. Again:—
“i celebrate myself,
And what i assume, you shall assume;
for every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you.
36
i loafe and invite my soul,
i lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass.
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes—the shelves are crowded with 
perfumes.
i breath the fragrance myself, and know it and like it;
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but i shall not let it.”
 The reader would be favorably impressed rather than otherwise with the above 
extracts. They are such as would excite the curiosity and create a desire to read 
the remainder of a book—these parts of which are so strikingly peculiar. But these 
are but gems we have caught from the nauseous mass; the lilies plucked from 
the garden of rank weeds. reader we have done; examine “Leaves of Grass” 
for yourself, and if you think we have done WaLt Whitman injustice, surely his 
language is capable of two constructions. 
 we close with his own words:
 
“dear friends—whoever you are—here—take this kiss.
i give it especially to you—do not forget me;
i feel like one who has done his work. i progress on,
The unknown sphere, more real than i dreamed; more direct, darts awakening 
 rays about me.
so Long!
remember my words—i love you—i depart from materials;
i am as one disembodied—triumphant—dead!”
 
University of Iowa eriC Conrad
NOTES
1 “Our Book Table,” New York Daily News (November 28, 1856).
2 “The Trade Sale,” New York Daily News (August 17, 1860), 4.
3 for examples of how whitman’s poetry and persona circulated in the South at this 
time, see Eric conrad, “whitman and the Proslavery Press: Newly recovered 1860 
reviews.” Walt Whitman Quarterly review 27 (Spring 2010), 227-233.
4 See william Gilmore Simms, Beauchampe: or The Kentucky Tragedy: a Tale of Pas-
sion (New york: redfield, 1856), 174-175.  
5 “Leaves of Grass,” Centre College Magazine (September 1, 1860), 13-16.
6 An allusion to an early blank verse poem by daniel webster published in the 
dartmouth Gazette; the line is taken from a passage describing the creation of earth 
and the qualities of prelapsarian man (quoted in Life of Daniel Webster, statesman and 
Patriot [Boston: lee and Shepard, 1868], 110):   
37
when that grand period in the eternal mind,
long predetermined, had arrived, behold
The universe, this most stupendous mass
Of things, to instant being rose. This globe,
for light and heat dependent on the sun,
By power supreme was then ordained to roll
And on its surface bear immortal man,
complete in bliss, the image of his God.
His soul, to gentle harmonies attuned,
Th’ ungovern’d rage of boisterous passion knew not.


English

Two Previously Undocumented Reviews of Leaves of Grass

Front Matter, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, vol. 29, no. 4

Hudder, Cliff

"A day of most heartfelt sorrow": Death and Texas in Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself"

Blalock, Stephanie M.

99
4 “abram S. hewitt,” The Encyclopedia of New York City, Second Edition, ed. kenneth 
T. Jackson (New haven, CT: yale university Press, 2010), 594.
5 Edwin G. burrows and mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York to 1898 (New 
york: Oxford university Press, 1999), 662, 775.
6 Edward C. mack, Peter Cooper: Citizen of New York (New york: duel, Sloan and 
Pearce, 1949), 174.
7 allan Nevins, Abram S. Hewitt: With Some Account of Peter Cooper (New york: harper 
and brothers, 1935), 138-139.
8 The fact that Whitman misspelled hewitt’s name and did not refer to him in any 
known correspondence suggests they were not acquainted, nor is there evidence the poet 
reached out to hewitt as he did with Emerson. and why would he, especially in 1855, 
when hewitt was only known, if he was known at all, as a talented entrepreneur in the 
iron industry and lucky husband of amelia Cooper?
9 Ed Folsom, “The Sesquicentennial of the 1856 Leaves of Grass: a daguerreotype of 
a Woman reader,” Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 24 (Summer 2006), 33-34.
10 The fact that Whitman had published a handful of immature poems over seven 
years earlier in various local newspapers hardly explains the immediate success of Leaves 
of Grass.
11 abram S. hewitt, Selected Writings of Abram S. Hewitt (New york: Columbia uni-
versity Press, 1937), 13, 224, 296, 311, 320.
a rECENTly diSCOvErEd PhOTOGraPh OF FrEd Gray
The photograph of Walt Whitman’s comrade John Frederick Schiller Gray 
(Fred Gray), first published in a volume of Civil War reminiscences and repro-
duced here, is a previously unknown image of Gray, a college student turned 
union soldier whom the poet met at Pfaff’s beer cellar in New york during the 
summer of 1862, a few months before Gray enlisted. Whitman spent nearly 
every evening with the young man at Pfaff’s, forming lasting comradeships 
with Gray and the other members of a group of educated and well-traveled 
bachelors that the poet called the “Fred Gray association.”1  before beginning 
his military service, Gray gave Whitman a prized copy of Frederic hedge’s 
Prose Writers of Germany as a parting gift. inside this volume, the poet kept two 
card photographs of Gray in his military uniform—one of which was dated 
September 3, 1862, only three days before Gray was mustered into service as 
a second lieutenant in the Twentieth New york infantry volunteers.2  These 
photographs, which Whitman carefully preserved, were the only known extant 
images of Gray until my recent discovery of this picture of the twenty-two-
year-old soldier during his time on the staff of major-General John Ellis Wool.
This photograph of Gray, along with another image showing the remain-
ing members of Wool’s personal staff, was published in an 1895 book entitled 
Personal Reminiscences of the Rebellion, 1861-1866 by le Grand bouton Can-
non.3  When he was eighty years old, Cannon, who had been a capitalist and 
a “director in numerous banking and industrial corporations,” set to work 
100
making a record of his remembrances of the Civil War and his experiences 
serving the union cause (Cannon, 7; “Colonel leGrand b. Cannon,” 463).4 
On april 23, 1861, Cannon had accepted a position as a volunteer aide-de-
camp responsible for organizing and equipping troops in New york at the 
request of General Wool, with whom he had served previously during the 
Canadian rebellion of 1838 (Cannon, 21; “Colonoel leGrand b. Cannon,” 
464).  Nearly two years later, on January 20, 1863, Fred Gray was also ap-
pointed as an aide-de-camp under the command of General Wool, who had 
been recently transferred to New york to take command of the department 
of the East.5  This staff photograph, in which Gray stands beside his fellow 
officers, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword, certainly pre-dates General 
Wool’s retirement and, therefore, was most likely taken sometime between 
Gray’s late-January appointment and the end of Wool’s active military service 
on august 1, 1863.6  
although Cannon and Gray both served as aides-de-camp for General 
Wool, it is unclear how well the two men knew each other or whether they 
ever worked closely together since Cannon’s book does not include any ad-
ditional information about Gray or the young man’s military career.  but 
correspondence between the members of the Fred Gray association and Whit-
man details Gray’s military duties throughout this appointment.  in a may 1, 
1863, letter to the poet, for example, Gray expressed considerable frustration 
that he could no longer enjoy “disreputable cakes and ale” with Whitman at 
Pfaff’s because he was responsible for a number of “detestable clerical duties 
incidental to my position” including transcribing orders and answering letters. 
Gray explained that he had not written the poet a lengthy letter “befitting my 
earnest affection for you” since he had been “constantly on the go” attending 
101
the General and “accompanying him on his tours of inspection” (Shively, 
147).7 Charles kingsley, a member of the Fred Gray association and mutual 
friend of both Gray and Whitman described Gray’s most recent assignment in 
a march 21, 1863, letter to the poet, reporting, “Fred is . . . just back from a 
tour of inspection among the forts down east, including Portland, Portsmouth, 
boston, Newport, New london, Etc. Etc., firing off all the guns to test their 
effectiveness.” kingsley ends his letter by adding that Whitman must be sure 
to ask Gray to tell him the entire history of his travels because the narrative 
was, according to kingsley, a “very funny” one indeed (Shively, 153).8  Gray 
concluded his own letter to the poet with a fond “Good bye old boy” and 
an apology for his inability to write more because General Wool, whom Gray 
dubbed “The Original Jacobo,” had just ordered the young man to “see about 
some  d—d fortification” (Shively, 149).
Even though Fred Gray seems to have disliked some of his military re-
sponsibilities and sometimes adopted a humorous, even sarcastic, tone when 
writing to the poet about his position on General Wool’s staff, the young man 
excelled in the performance of his military duties.  Following his stint as an 
aide-de-camp under General Wool, Gray became assistant adjutant-General 
of volunteers, and he took up his “detestable clerical duties” again, serving as 
an aide-de-camp on the staff of then brigadier-General Edward r. S. Canby 
after Canby became the commanding general in charge of New york City 
and its harbor.9  On august 5, 1863, Gray received orders assigning him to 
duty at Canby’s new headquarters of command, which was located at No. 44 
bleecker Street, not far from Pfaff’s beer cellar.10  When Canby was named 
Commander of the military division West of the mississippi in may 1864, 
Gray was ordered to Cairo, illinois; in November of the same year, he served 
temporarily under brigadier-General John W. davidson, Chief of Cavalry 
of the West mississippi division, before returning to his post under Canby. 
later, Gray was brevetted major for “meritorious services at the siege and 
capture” of mobile, alabama.11
Whitman always preserved the hedge volume and the photographs of 
Gray in his uniform, suggesting that the poet wanted to remember the young 
man as a soldier.  after all, even though Whitman may have eventually “lost 
track” of Gray, he did follow the young man’s military career during the war 
years, gleaning information about Gray’s whereabouts, health, and responsi-
bilities, first from Gray’s parents and then from letters he received from Gray 
as well as those from other members of the association, including Charles 
kingsley. it is certain, therefore, that Whitman would have been proud to see 
Gray as he appears here, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with several other 
aides-de-camp and assistant adjutant generals, perhaps readying himself to 
attend General Wool on his tours of inspection in the east. 
Technical University of Dortmund Stephanie M. Blalock
102
 NOTES
1 While visiting his family in New york in September 1864, Whitman wrote a letter to 
his friend William d. O’Connor in Washington, in which he described a reunion with his 
Fred Gray comrades as one of the highlights of the trip: “my health is quite re-established 
. . . i go out quite regularly, sometimes out on the bay or to Coney island—& occasion-
ally a tour through New york life, as of old—last night i was with some of my friends of 
Fred Gray association, till late wandering the east side of the City—first in the lager bier 
saloons & then elsewhere” (1:241).  See letter to William d. O’Connor, September 11, 
1864; Walt Whitman: The Correspondence, ed. Edwin haviland miller (New york: New 
york university Press, 1961-1977), 1:241.  hereafter, Corr.  i have written a detailed 
biographical portrait of Gray and an examination of Whitman’s lifelong friendship with 
several of the association’s members; see “‘my dear Comrade Frederickus’: Walt Whit-
man and Fred Gray,” Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 27 (Summer/Fall 2009), 49-65.
2 The hedge volume and Whitman’s card photographs of Gray are now housed in the 
Special Collections department of Canady library at bryn mawr College; see Frederic 
hedge, Prose Writers of Germany (Philadelphia: Carey and hart, 1848), from the library of 
Walt Whitman; with his notes and memorabilia of a former owner, John F.S. Gray.   See 
also “Frances Gray,” united States Congressional Serial Set, 58th Congress, 2d session, 
report no. 474 (Washington: united States Government Printing Office, 1904), 1-2. 
3 le Grand bouton Cannon, Personal Reminiscences of the Rebellion, 1861-1866 (New 
york: burr Printing house, 1895), 142.
4 Cannon, 7; “Colonel leGrand b. Cannon,” Genealogical and Family History of the 
State of Vermont: A Record of the Achievements of Her People in the Making of a Commonwealth 
and the Founding of a Nation,” ed. hiram Carleton (New york: The lewis Publishing 
Company, 1903), 462-465.
5 “The department of the East: General Wool in Command,” The New York Times 
(January 14, 1863); “local intelligence,” The New York Times (January 23, 1863).     
6 “Frances Gray,” united States Congressional Serial Set, 58th Congress, 2d Session, 
report no. 474 (Washington: united States Government Printing Office, 1904), 1-2; 
“News From Washington; Our Special Washington dispatches” The New York Times 
(July 22, 1863). 
7 letter from Fred Gray to Walt Whitman, may 1, 1863, reprinted in Charley Shively, 
ed., Drum Beats: Walt Whitman’s Civil War Boy Lovers (San Francisco: Gay Sunshine 
Press, 1989), 147-149. 
8 letter from Charles S. kingsley to Walt Whitman, march 21, 1863, reprinted in 
Shively, 153.
9 Shively, 147; “affairs at the military headquarters,” The New York Times (July 18, 
1863).
10 “military affairs,” The New York Times (august 13, 1863).
11 The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confed-
erate Armies, series 1, vol. 34, Part iii (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1891), 
490-491; hereafter, Official Records.  Official Records, Series 1, vol. 41, Part iv—Cor-
respondence; 644; Catalogue of the Sigma Phi with the Thesaurus, (Printed for the society, 
boston: T.r. marvin & Son, 1891), 252-253.


A Recently Discovered Photograph of Fred Gray

Bradford, Adam

Whitley, Edward. American Bards: Walt Whitman and Other Unlikely Candidates for National Poet [review]

Grossman, Jay

185
in memoriam: roBert K. martin
robert K. martin, professor emeritus at the université de montréal and 
eminent Whitman scholar, died on February 19, 2012.  professor martin’s 
career as a scholar and a teacher in every way lived up to the highest standards 
of humanist research, pedagogy, and dedicated service to the profession and 
the community at-large.  
even a brief overview of martin’s career demonstrates his remarkable range 
and productivity as a scholar.  his ground-breaking contributions began with 
his highly influential 1975 Partisan Review essay, “Whitman’s Song of Myself: 
homosexual Dream and Vision,” followed quickly by his first book, The Ho-
mosexual Tradition in American Poetry (1979), which, as Jared gardner wrote in 
a review of the 1998 expanded edition, “reoriented completely the language in 
which american poetry was discussed,” by insisting “not that homosexuality 
tells all there is to say about these poems but that without an understanding of 
the centrality of homosexuality the poems say precisely nothing.”  a great deal 
that we take for granted today about the viability and centrality of sexuality as 
a crucial hermeneutic in cultural and literary studies generally, and in Whitman 
studies specifically, can be traced to the critical posture martin adopted in The 
Homosexual Tradition and employed there to such productive and persuasive 
effect.  
a similar point can be made about martin’s second major intervention 
in the american literary canon, Hero, Captain, and Stranger: Male Friendship, 
Social Critique, and Literary Form in the Sea Novels of Herman Melville (1986). 
in this work martin once again reframed the past in order to foreground its 
sometimes unexpected connections to the literary, theoretical, and political 
concerns of the present.  in the book’s preface martin wrote: “the male couple, 
as melville imagined it, can serve as the basis for a reexamination of the way 
men are called upon to assume roles of power and authority.”  melville’s rep-
resentations of alternative relations between men, martin continued, can serve 
as “an important part of a larger movement that can ally itself to feminist and 
ecological thinking.”  in his critical writing martin was always looking ahead, 
testing the boundaries of new connections and coalitions, and his invocation 
here of “ecological thinking” is one of the earliest i know of what is becoming 
increasingly familiar today as “green criticism.”  as in so many other instances, 
robert martin got there first.
two vital and recurring aspects of martin’s career are also especially notewor-
thy, for they encapsulate what made him not only a uniquely vibrant scholar and 
teacher, but a dear and valued colleague as well.  martin edited or co-edited no 
fewer than five books on topics ranging from Whitman (The Continuing Presence 
of Walt Whitman: The Life after the Life, 1992) to e. m. Forster to the american 
gothic; his last, on italy and its place in the nineteenth-century american liter-
ary imagination, appeared in 2002. these collaborative works—as well as the 
astonishing number of scholarly book reviews he wrote—reveal not only his 
capacious intelligence and unyielding curiosity, but also his intellectual generos-
ity, sense of scholarly responsibility, and extraordinary service to the fields he 
has also profoundly shaped.  moreover, all of this work exists alongside essays 
186
and book chapters on crucial figures in an expanding canon that martin taught 
us to read anew: Whitman (including his pioneering essay on Whitman and 
thomas mann that appeared in WWQR in 1986), melville, nathaniel haw-
thorne, henry James, hart Crane, e. m. Forster, andré gide, roland Barthes, 
gertrude Stein.  Where indeed would gay and lesbian Studies and american 
literary and cultural studies be without the work of robert K. martin? 
in 2006, as a member of the executive Committee of the Division on gay 
Studies in language and literature for the modern language association, i or-
ganized a special panel in professor martin’s honor.  Before a multi-generational 
audience of scholars and students who packed the room, stood along the back 
wall, and sat on the floor, three distinguished scholars sounded the depths of 
martin’s scholarly work in the context of the continuing unfolding of lesbian 
and gay Studies, and then listened as audience members commented on his 
political bravery—not only staking his academic career on an open acknowl-
edgment of his own homosexuality, but also focusing his scholarship on the 
irreducible relevance of sexuality and homosexuality for literary studies.  the 
papers were published in GLQ in 2008 (“Queer lineations: robert K. martin 
and gay literary Studies”), providing an opportunity for everyone to reacquaint 
themselves with martin’s contributions not only to american gay and lesbian 
literary and cultural studies, but also to the study of a wide array of British, 
european, and Canadian artists, writers, and theorists of the nineteenth and 
twentieth centuries. 
it goes without saying to those who knew him that robert was also a kind and 
gentle man, good-humored, welcoming, encouraging, and supportive. Which is 
to say that he was not only admired, but loved. in all of these ways his life and 
his career exemplify all that is best about our shared profession. 
  —Jay Grossman
 


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